News
Car That Walks - Make That "Runs" - on Water? Japanese Company Making the Claim
TOKYO — Genepax, a Japanese company, showed Reuters news service its water-powered prototype car. According to the company's claim, the car can run at speeds up to 80 km/h (49 mph) for an hour on 1 liter of any kind of water.
Reuters published the video online and reported, "Genepax may well have the solution" that consumers are looking for in an era of spiraling gas prices. The company's invention reportedly works by extracting hydrogen from the water in the car's tank, using what Genepax calls its Water Energy System, or WES. The hydrogen then releases electrons that produce the electrical power that the car runs on.
The political punditry site Huffington Post was highly skeptical. "It is actually possible to make a car look like it runs on water...with metal hydrides. These react with water to produce hydrogen," the Huffington Post story says. "But since these hydrides will deplete with time, they need to be replaced and so they are actually the fuel, not the water. And you can be sure that more energy will go into producing them than will be taken out, making them an energy carrier, just like a battery."
The company hopes to go into mass production with a Japanese manufacturer, according to Reuters. Among those plans are a presentation and demonstration in English for the world's media, to be held "soon" in Tokyo. At it, Genepax promises to display its electricity-generation module, prototype generator system and an all-electric car with onboard Water Energy System for continuous battery charging.
Company information can be found at the Genepax Web site, although most of the pages currently say "coming soon."
What this means to you: An apparently sincere attempt to find alternatives to fossil fuels, but whether it's an improvement over current electric-car projects remains to be seen. — Laura Sky Brown, Correspondent
Reuters published the video online and reported, "Genepax may well have the solution" that consumers are looking for in an era of spiraling gas prices. The company's invention reportedly works by extracting hydrogen from the water in the car's tank, using what Genepax calls its Water Energy System, or WES. The hydrogen then releases electrons that produce the electrical power that the car runs on.
The political punditry site Huffington Post was highly skeptical. "It is actually possible to make a car look like it runs on water...with metal hydrides. These react with water to produce hydrogen," the Huffington Post story says. "But since these hydrides will deplete with time, they need to be replaced and so they are actually the fuel, not the water. And you can be sure that more energy will go into producing them than will be taken out, making them an energy carrier, just like a battery."
The company hopes to go into mass production with a Japanese manufacturer, according to Reuters. Among those plans are a presentation and demonstration in English for the world's media, to be held "soon" in Tokyo. At it, Genepax promises to display its electricity-generation module, prototype generator system and an all-electric car with onboard Water Energy System for continuous battery charging.
Company information can be found at the Genepax Web site, although most of the pages currently say "coming soon."
What this means to you: An apparently sincere attempt to find alternatives to fossil fuels, but whether it's an improvement over current electric-car projects remains to be seen. — Laura Sky Brown, Correspondent
Add A Comment »